As some readers noted, the Borderlands patches released earlier today included SecuROM for the new The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned DLC for the role-playing shooter. The SecuROM implements a five-installation limit for the DLC, and Big Download now offers downloads of the de-authorization tool that will allow the management of this five-machine limit.

"Hey, let's ship the full game with a basic CD-check! But we better make sure the far less valuable DLC requires online activation and has install limits, otherwise those pesky pirates will pirate it!"

And the pirates are playing the original and the DLC without the installation limits. Go progress! One day, maybe, the developers and publishers will wake up and realize "hey, if I call my wife a scumbag and a criminal, she'll leave! Maybe that's why my customers are leaving too!" Yeah right.

...heh, why would the DLC need an install limit in the first place? People are just going to pass it around and install it on their systems?

I guess retail versions of the game don't have any online system that keeps ownerships established when you buy the DLC so someone could just activate it and pass it on to someone else?

Seems like you could easily just assign the DLC a code to identify it and link that to the code that it's activated with. (IE their copy of Borderlands...) And you wouldn't need to limit activations, just lock it to that one code...